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Publishing Principles 

Our own Code of Ethics also sets out our belief that it is important that research is available and widely used and that we stand against censorship or restrictions imposed on our publications. For these reasons we will: 

• resist censorship requests to restrict access to, or modify or redact sections from, any content we publish 
• support and empower those in positions of editorial decision making to foster intellectual curiosity and debate 
• encourage authors to submit and publish rigorous scholarship with us, without fear or coercion 

 

Where these commitments are challenged, we will pursue remedies which adhere to the key principles below:  

• Our responsibility for the transparency and preservation of the scholarly record. 
• Preserving editorial independence, which is the separation of editorial decision making from commercial or ownership interests. 
• Upholding the values we share with our University on Academic freedom and freedom of speech 
• Maintaining the standards set out in these guidelines and in our University’s approach to Research Integrity. 

Research integrity

We uphold the same high standards as our University, and expect research published by Cambridge University Press to abide by the principles within the University’s Research Integrity Statement. These principles cover:

• honesty in all aspects of research;
• scrupulous care, thoroughness and excellence in research practice;
• transparency and open communication;
• care and respect for all participants in and subjects of research;
• accountability both for one’s own research integrity and that of others when behaviour falls short of our standards.

In addition to the general principles above, we expect our journal editorial teams to provide specific guidelines and policies for authors on research integrity and ethics appropriate to their subject matter and discipline. Please refer to the Journal Policies page of the relevant journal for further details.

Anyone who believes that research published by Cambridge University Press has not been carried out in line with these Research Publishing Ethics Guidelines, or the above principles, should raise their concern with the relevant editor or email publishingethics@cambridge.org. Concerns will be addressed by following COPE guidelines where possible and/or by following our own internal escalation procedure if necessary.

Editorial independence

We are committed to editorial independence, and strive in all cases to prevent this principle from being compromised through competing interests, fear, or any other corporate, business, financial or political influence. We believe editorial decisions on individual manuscripts should be based on scholarly merit and on potential importance to the community served by the journal.

Academic freedom

We are committed to academic freedom. This is a fundamental principle for us as a university press. As a department of the University of Cambridge we are aligned to its position on freedom of speech.

Our core purpose is to support academic discourse through the quality, breadth and diversity of our publishing. Everything we publish is validated through a rigorous peer review process including oversight by the Academic Publishing Committee.

A central part of our mission is a commitment to pluralism in academic inquiry, including where this means engaging with viewpoints which are contested or controversial. We support respectful scholarly analysis and discourse, and we do not publish work that directly or intentionally incites violence, racism or other forms of discrimination and hatred.

Further detail on Cambridge University Press’ approach to publishing ethics can be viewed here. The University of Cambridge’s approach to freedom of speech can also be viewed online.

Editorial process

Our academic publishing programme is overseen by the Syndicate Academic Publishing Committee (SAPC), consisting of academics from the University of Cambridge who independently approve Cambridge University Press taking on the publishing of an established journal or the creation of a new journal. The SAPC approves the appointment of individual editors and editorial board members to our Syndicate journals. The SAPC may also advise on policy changes, ethics or other matters affecting the conduct of our journals’ business, but SAPC responsibilities do not include decisions to publish individual articles.

Editorial decisions on manuscripts submitted to our journals are made by external academic editors and consider independent peer review reports, in line with the journal’s stated peer review policy.

We encourage all journals to provide a public policy and process for considering appeals of editorial decisions. Please refer to the ‘Submitting your materials’ page of the relevant journal for further details. If you have concerns and wish to appeal or file a complaint, please contact publishingethics@cambridge.org, or the relevant journal contact as outlined in that journal’s appeals process. It is the journal’s responsibility to disclose the journal policy and ensure it is implemented by any guest or special issue editors.

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)

We do not discriminate against authors, editors or peer reviewers based on personal characteristics or identity. We are committed to promoting equality, embedding diversity and removing barriers to inclusion at every stage of our publishing process. We actively seek and encourage submissions from scholars of diverse backgrounds, including race and ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, and disability. Editorial decisions on individual manuscripts should be based on scholarly merit, and should not be affected by the origins of the manuscript, including the nationality, political beliefs, religion, or identity of the authors.

We recognise the right for people to be treated with respect and dignity and we do not tolerate any form of harassment, abusive behaviour or correspondence towards our staff and others involved in the publishing process on our behalf. If anyone involved in this process engages in such behaviour we have the right to take action to protect others from this abuse. This may include, for example, withdrawal of a manuscript from consideration, or challenging clearly abusive peer review comments.

Peer review

Peer review is critical to maintaining the standards of our publications. We:

• provide appropriate systems, training and support to facilitate rigorous, fair and effective peer review for all our publications;
• encourage our editors and peer reviewers to familiarise themselves with and act in accordance with relevant best practice guidelines on peer review. Journal editors and peer reviewers should refer to COPE’s Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers and Cambridge's guide to peer reviewing journal articles;
• expect those who oversee the peer review process to be able to recognise warning signs of fraudulent or manipulated peer review, and to raise any concerns by emailing publishingethics@cambridge.org. People who oversee the peer review process may be internal to Cambridge University Press or contracted by us directly or indirectly;
• support our editors and peer reviewers in investigating and acting on any suspected cases of manipulated or fraudulent peer review;
• protect the confidentiality of participants in the peer review process where anonymity forms part of that publication’s peer review process. We also expect our publishing partners, authors and peer reviewers to uphold any relevant confidentiality arrangements for each journal and to provide necessary information to support this.
• expect our journals to display details of their peer review model on the journal homepage, using an appropriate framework such as the NISO standard. Further details on peer review models operated by Cambridge journals can be found on our How to peer review journal articles page.

Confidentiality

We expect reviewers to uphold the confidentiality of the review process, as described by the journal. Unless otherwise specified by or agreed with the journal, this means the reviewer must not share the content for review with any other person, public platform, or AI tool. Any breach of confidentiality will be considered peer review misconduct, and may be reported to the reviewer’s institution.

Co-reviewing

In journals that allow co-reviewing, an invited reviewer can work with a more junior colleague to review a manuscript for the purpose of reviewer training. This allows the co-reviewer to gain experience with the review process. Invited reviewers must declare any co-reviewers to the journal in advance of sharing the manuscript, and co-reviewers must declare any relevant competing interests. Further details on individual journals’ co-reviewing requirements can be found on the journal’s information and policy pages.

Editing of peer reviews

Unless entered into a written agreement otherwise, reviews are the intellectual property of reviewers. We encourage all those involved in the editorial process to familiarise themselves with the COPE Guidelines on Editing of Peer Reviews. Where breaches of the following policy are suspected, authors/reviewers should raise their concerns through the appeals/complaints process for that publication, or to publishingethics@cambridge.org

We expect all our journals to have a stated policy on the editing of peer reviews, including whether reviews may be edited (and, if so, under what circumstances). The journal’s policy should be clearly communicated to authors and reviewers.

Transparency

We strive to follow COPE’s Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing and encourage our publishing partners to uphold these same principles.

Integrity of record

We maintain a record of the existence of everything we publish with information (metadata) describing each publication. If our content is deemed not to comply with the laws of a sovereign nation, we make every effort to ensure the metadata remain accessible within that jurisdiction.

We use the following definitions for article versions:

• Preprint: An early version of an article created prior to the version submitted for publication in a journal. Theses and dissertations are considered to be preprints. See here for our full policy on preprints.
• Submitted Manuscript Under Review (SMUR): The version of the article that is under formal review for inclusion in the journal.
• Accepted Manuscript (AM): The version of the article that has been accepted for publication. Where Accepted Manuscripts are published on Cambridge Core, these are considered citable items in the scholarly record. The AM may be subject to further modification by Cambridge University Press (for example, copyediting and typesetting), but any editorially significant changes to a published AM will fall under our Post-publication notices, changes and discussions policy.
• Version of Record (VoR): The version that is formally published in the journal. This includes any FirstView article that is formally identified as being published online before the compilation of a journal issue.

VoRs are intended to be permanent, definitive, final versions of the article and should remain ‘extant, exact, and unaltered to the maximum extent possible’.Any post-publication change, where necessary, will therefore be carried out with maximum possible transparency. For further information, please see our Post-publication notices, changes and discussions policy.

We apply these same principles to our marketing, and do not modify or manipulate the representation of the academic record in our marketing activities.

When any product (chapter, article, book, Element or journal) is purchased or subscribed to, we supply it only in its totality to the customer, who is not entitled to alter its content in any way that is inconsistent with the licensing terms under which it was published. Any sale of disaggregated products is subject to the contracts with the copyright holders of the original products.